Mr. Rodrigo Herman Jordan leads the 8 member group Chilean Mt. Everest 2004
Expedition this spring 2004. The group includes
Annabelle Bond.
Our coverage of this expedition will be mainly with the dispatches of
Annabelle Bond.

ABOUT ANNABELLE BOND

I was born in Singapore in
1969, and moved to Hong Kong when I was 3 years old. Apart from 2 years living
in Jakarta, Indonesia, where I actually learnt to speak Bahasa (long forgotten
now unfortunately), I stayed in Hong Kong until I was 17 years old, when we
moved to New York for two years. My whole family share a love of America, and
I now spend as much time as possible at our house in Aspen, Colorado. The
athleticism one encounters in the States is humbling to me and one of my
favourite incidents was when my 26 year old brother got overtaken by a 70 year
old man whilst out jogging in Aspen!

I was 8 years old when I
started the long commute alone from Hong Kong to England to go to boarding
school. This went on for 10years whilst completing my education, and Hong Kong
felt like home to me. After A levels I spent a year at school in Switzerland
where I fell in love with the mountains before heading back to London to
search for a job. After a few false starts my father convinced me to move back
to Hong Kong and work there, that was the best decision I made. In 1991 I
began a real estate career in Hong kong with FPDSavills where I remained
moving progressively up the ranks until I got made a director in 1999. At the
end of 2000 I resigned and moved to live in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Whilst I was in Hong Kong in
1997 I began running long distance and for 4 consecutive years competed in The
MacLehose Trail, an understated name for the 103km mountain marathon which
covered some 23,000ft of vertical in steambath conditions. My best finish was
second woman out of 4,000 competitors in a completion time of 16 hours and 50
minutes ( this was the woman who did not think she could run for more than an
hour) I also competed in a couple of mountain half marathons and held the
woman's record for 3 years on one of the courses. I trained whenever I had free
time from my busy schedule, and my clients would often wonder why I was deep
breathing on the phone at 4.00pm in the afternoons!

When I arrived in Sun Valley,
sports was my primary focus and as soon as the ski season ended I went to
Nepal to trek to Everest Base Camp and over the Chola Pass into Gokio. I fell
madly in love with the dramatic scenery, the spirituality of the country and
the sherpa people and vowed to come back again. I then headed to Peru to run
the Inca Trail and the Ausangate circuit, even back then my preferred brand of
sports clothes was Arcteryx so i'm delighted that they are sponsoring me.

My adventure wonderlust took
me climbing in New Zealand, home of the adrenalin junkie, and then onto climb
Aconcagua in Argentina, at 22,880 feet it is the highest peak in the southern
hemisphere and one of the seven summits. South America, fascinated me and I
went on to climb in Bolivia, I rode across Ecuador on horseback and went to
Argentina to learn to play polo. I will tell you all about my love for chile
in my training for everest section. Chile is the most diverse and beautiful
country I have visited with Mountains, beach, skiing and desert all within a
couple hours radius of Santiago. If you have not been its a "must do"!!

I would still love to make an
adventure travel tv programme and in doing so, inspire others to try a
different type of holiday but in the meantime I am happy to do the research
and to fullfill my own personal goal of climbing the seven summits. There are
only 78 people in the world so far who have achieved this and I think under 7
of them are woman. Annabelle